Wrestling Thread
- Thread starter Laparkafan
- Start date
Gotta chase the almighty dollar... Or in this case, the almighty riyal
They should have held off on announcing and going live with this thing for a good while longer. They pissed off a bunch of people with it because they basically released a beta version while charging $99 for it.
AEW and US Soccer are bargains compared to the rest of the stuff on that list. Paramount is going to end up regretting that UFC deal. 0% chance they are going to make money on that deal. No way on earth is it worth half an NFL contract. TKO completely hoodwinked them.
I can definitely see them not wanting to renew the MLB and putting more resources into the WNBA instead. Run during the same season, WNBA is growing rapidly despite them being run by a bunch of idiots, and I highly doubt that contract will cost anywhere close to what the MLB is getting now.
Regardless, I would very much like to see AEW leave. I don't trust any company saddled with as much debt as they have. I don't know what other options may be realistically available but hopefully there is something respectable they can leave for regardless of rather Skydance wants to renew them or not.
But Tony Khan has been wanting this long before the merger was ever agreed to. I know he's friends with the Ellisons who own Skydance and he seems over the moon about it. Either he has legit reasons to feel that way or he is lying to everyone.
100% agree with Dave that they need to put more big matches on TV. They've been needing to do that even if it wasn't for media rights reasons. Every PPV cycle should be built around having 1 big TV match the week of the PPV and one the week after. With as many matches as they have on PPVs they can easily just hold two of them to be on TV instead.
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AEW is a somewhat reliable entity but when NXT is beating you some weeks and you look at how much CW is paying for that and what AEW is getting, it looks like WBD overpaid expecting more. WBD did seem content but they also canceled Collision. You had Swerve saying Fox was getting into the AEW business with Shockwave which didn't happen and Meltzer bumping up their Max numbers by making up numbers while a reporter recently fired for making stuff up makes stuff up in favor of AEW. Tony is glazing his new "best friend" while his "best friend" stays silent. In high school terms, it feels like a nerd who got partnered with a jock for a project and now the nerd believes he'll be invited to every Friday night jock party. Fans online have spread rumors of ESPN and Netflix secretly wanting out of their deals with WWE as well. The glazing, making up numbers to satisfy whoever, the false rumors...it doesn't lead to confidence about this new partnership and it looks desperate.
Skydance has massive debt and AEW is a small company that isn't growing. There will be little blowback on SD if AEW is cut. A few hundred thousand fans online and Dave Meltzer being upset will do nothing. Right now, it's reliable content but in the business world after a massive deal and transition you want to see growth going forward. Will AEW have growth in 3-5 years, less growth, or stay about where they are now? That's the question for Skydance. Do they see AEW growing and taking another step forward. We'll know their answer next year.
Skydance has massive debt and AEW is a small company that isn't growing. There will be little blowback on SD if AEW is cut. A few hundred thousand fans online and Dave Meltzer being upset will do nothing. Right now, it's reliable content but in the business world after a massive deal and transition you want to see growth going forward. Will AEW have growth in 3-5 years, less growth, or stay about where they are now? That's the question for Skydance. Do they see AEW growing and taking another step forward. We'll know their answer next year.
Specific numbers weren't given but it comes from a third quarter earnings call by SiriusXM's CEO.
I don't listen and barely watch anything Busted Open on YouTube. As wrestling fans, you do want a wrestling radio show to cover all things wrestling but if things weren't looking great for BO and you've got the biggest company in the world wanting to partner up, I think you do it. You go where the audience leads and whatever audience they have I guess wasn't responding to anything AEW. It's like on KSR, they'll talk about whatever but they're not spending time on UK swimming unless they win a national title and even then, it's in passing.
(Not comparing AEW to college swim meets but my point still stands, It's a small, hardcore audience who may rather talk to each other on Reddit than listen to Dave and Bully)
Collision has not been canceled. At least present correct information for god sake.
There's a big difference between cable and broadcast tv though. That's why the ratings reports always rank them separately. Broadcast networks are available in every home in the country for free so they have a massive numbers advantage over everything on cable. CW and all the other broadcast networks are available in approximately 100 million more homes than what TNT and TBS.
This significant numbers advantage is why it's rare that anything on cable but live sports beats anything in primetime on the big four of NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox.
For example, last Wednesday (the 21st), the lowest ranked show on broadcast outside of CW garbage was a 0.19, that placed it 10th out of 12 on broadcast. That would have been third on cable. The top show placed 0.87 on broadcast, which tied the NBA. The second ranked show on cable was the WNBA Final game at 0.21, eight shows on broadcast TV did 12 points better and a ninth did 5 points better.
For last Tuesday the 20th, NXT did a 0.10 demo to rank last on broadcast amongst 10 programs. The next worst was a 0.18. For viewership, it's 660K was several factors lower than the second lowest, which was 2.08 million. 2.08 million would beat out everything on cable except a couple Fox News show and the 0.18 demo that ranked next to last on broadcast would have easily ranked second on cable.
In the context of the rest of broadcast TV, NXT's numbers are garbage. It's exceedingly rare they ever beat any original/live program on broadcast TV for the entire week outside of other CW programming.
Meanwhile, Dynamite this week ranked #2 on cable, only getting beat out by the NBA. Collision this past week did better than the last two episodes of NXT in the demo despite being facing far stiffer competition on a Saturday night than NXT does on a Tuesday night
AEW's TV viewership/ratings for both Dynamite and Collision are up year over year.
First quarter of this year Collision was up 14% and Dynamite up 2% in total viewership per Wrestlenomics. For the second quarter it was -3% and +1%. For the third quarter it was +30% and +18%. For the current quarter it's +60% and +39%. In the demo for the current quarter, Collision is up 50% and Dynamite up 67%.
In fact, Dynamite and Collision for the year have an average higher viewership than what they did BEFORE they started simulcasting on HBO Max. 688K and 394K vs. 618K and 334K.
The demo hasn't faired as well compared to the pre-HBO Max days, but the Nielsen changes in late September 2025 killed the demos for Dynamite, Collision, NXT, and Smackdown. But Dynamite isn't far off what they were doing pre-HBO Max, currently at 0.15 for this quarter vs. 0.17 for the last pre-HBO Max quarter. Collision is a bit further behind, .06 vs. .09, but I don't believe that average includes this past Collision because the chart was posted before the Collision #s were released.
For comparison, NXT's total viewership for each quarter is -19%, -15%, -1%, and +4%. It's demo in the 4th quarter is +22%
Same splits for Smackdown on viewership are -20%, -15%, -11%, +13% and 4th quarter demo is +16%.
So both Dynamite and Collision are seeing a higher rate of growth than NXT and Smackdown.
Why would any AEW fan want to listen to Bused Open Radio prior to the WWE takeover? Why would anyone but AEW haters want to hear Dave LaGreca and Bubba Ray have a screaming aneurysm over every little thing he doesn't like, or Bubba proposing moronic stories like Jon Moxley should be a wifebeater? Mark Henry was frequent saying dumb crap too though I can't remember any one specific thing like with Bubba.
It's the same reason why all the other screaming head idiots numbers are going down the drain.
JDfromNY's and Jim Corentte complains about everything all the time and their numbers are down the drain over the last 1-2 years. Fightful canceled one of their preview shows and reduced the workload of another person because people were canceling their subscriptions and those two people were two of the most often cited reasons people were giving for canceling. Wrestling Observer subscriber base continues to shrink and shows with Bryan Alvarez on them have seen their metrics go down the drain because he is constantly complaining.
No one but miserable people wants to listen to someone who does virtually nothing but complain.
Mansoor just gets it. Shame there are others who'd rather just go on Twitter to complain about not being booked instead of putting in the work to justify getting booked over others.
0 people were not wrestling fans and started when NXT went on the CW. If you didn't have cable you didn't just becomTV. fan because a 3rd tier show came on free Tv.
I think there was a phase where people enjoyed the hot take/hypercritical nonsense but hopefully that’s cooling off and people would rather form their own opinions instead of being told what to think.
It’s why people are cooling on guys like McAfee it’s exhausting listening to over the top nonsense takes.
And it's not just sports either. Fox News has also suffered the largest year-to-year ratings drop in the month before an election in the past 10 years. Hopefully this trend is more than just a phase in everything.
It's perfectly fine and healthy to criticize. Everyone needs to be held accountable. But toxic positivity can be just as bad as toxic negativity. But so much of what we see across all ventures is bad faith, lying, trolling, and grifting of people who are too stupid, gullible, and ignorant to know any better.
As much as I dislike WWE and NXT, I think I'd rather gouge out my eyeballs than listen to an entire show of Alvarez reviewing NXT or Smackdown. Much less watch it every week.
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They've been doing really good work for quite a while now and they got over very quick in Japan. I don't know what their future is like in AEW but once the old guard finally steps away I don't see any reason why they can't step in there.
I had gotten the impression for a while that they weren't cool with each other outside the ring. Not like any reports or anything, just piecing together things that have been said by the two and the weird way things went after the Acclaimed broke up.
Guess that is not the case. Would be kind of weird to dress up as a guy you know and don't like for Halloween.
Andrade vs. Ciampa for the National title on Collision live from the Jericho Cruise next Saturday.
Persephone challenged Aminata for the Blood & Guts match so they've been added to the match this Wednesday.
Persephone challenged Aminata for the Blood & Guts match so they've been added to the match this Wednesday.
Hurt Syndicate squashed some bums in a 3 on 2 handicap match. Wonder if they will be around again anytime soon?
And Gable and Rey Fenix
But lol at dragging out a 48-year-old to job for a developmental title with no story.
Actually it will probably be a no finish so even worse.
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You're asking why AEW fans would listen to BO to begin with but there were plenty of AEW fans who complained once they inked a deal with WWE. It's a smaller fanbase so if you spend an entire show on an AEW PPV, as good as that PPV might've been, because of the smaller base, that episode will do less views/clicks/whatever and less business.
As far as JD goes, he's an annoying gimmick but I do occasionally listen to his weekly show with Solo and (I think) JD's subs and views have only risen. He's also spent most of the year crushing WWE. Personally, I think he's too negative in general but his numbers haven't gone down the drain. Cornette has one of the top wrestling podcasts in existence. It'll stay that way until he stops. His numbers haven't gone down the drain either. His channel has 480K subs and his Hurt Syndicate video that dropped 9 hrs ago already has 44K views and nearly 600 comments. By tomorrow it might be 60K views and 900 comments. His Vice Sports videos are doing massive numbers as well. A couple of those have 1.3M and 1.4M views on YT.
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